The Outside Man

by Don Bentley

  Except that our simple plan now seemed to be unraveling at the seams a little more every second. With Zain’s cryptic message still fresh in my mind, I had no intention of exchanging the safety provided by the crowd of potential buyers for the kitchen’s tight confines.

  If the Devil knew I was here, he’d want to remove me from the equation with minimal disruption to the event he’d spent untold amounts of time and money piecing together. The kitchen would offer a perfect opportunity to do just that. This was why I was bringing Zain’s man to me instead of the other way around.

  Across the room, the waiter disappeared behind the swinging door leading to the kitchen as I tried to keep my ever-growing sense of unease at bay. Clandestine operations were tricky things. A good operative constantly navigated the razor’s edge between heightened awareness and heightened stress. A healthy sense of distrust was essential to staying alive, but if left to fester, negative thoughts could quickly escalate into crippling terror. Terror that rendered an operative incapable of making decisions.

  I was no more an expert at navigating these treacherous waters than any other spy. Still, over the years, I’d found a touchstone to bring things into perspective. My Glock. The absence of the comforting bulge in my waistband was profound. The sooner I got my hands on a pistol, the better.

  “Boss? Hey, boss. You need to see this!”

  Oliver grabbed my shoulder, giving it a shake.

  “What?” I said, shrugging away his hand. The waiter had been inside for more than enough time to find the wine steward. If Zain’s man didn’t exit the kitchen door in the next minute or two, we had a problem.

  “Look,” Oliver said, grabbing my shoulder again.

  I turned away from the door to face Oliver, and the irritation I felt at being interrupted vanished after I saw what had attracted his attention. At the opposite end of the cavernous room, the dormant stage lighting was coming to life, illuminating an elevated platform. A moment later, a spotlight mounted somewhere flared, casting a brilliant circle of light over the polished wood.

  For a long second, the pool of light stood vacant.

  And then the Devil entered from stage left.

  “Fuck,” I said, fumbling in my pocket for my cell phone. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

  Unfortunately, my cell phone, like my wife, was not impressed with harsh language. The jammer was still functioning as advertised. Oliver and I were completely cut off from the rest of our team.

  “What now?” Oliver said.

  “We call an audible,” I said. “In fact, this is the best news I’ve had all day. I was starting to worry that the Devil wasn’t going to leave Syria and, even if he did, that I wouldn’t be able to find him in the crowd. But now he’s done my work for me. That shithead should be shaking in his boots.”

  But the Devil did not seem to be shaking in his boots. In fact, he looked to be enjoying himself. Gazing out on the audience, he gave a broad smile as the spotlight warmed his bronze complexion and burnished his hair to a dark luster.

  “Good evening, friends,” the Devil said, overhead speakers sending his voice booming across the room. “And welcome. Those of you who know me know that I don’t do anything in half measures. I assured you that tonight’s party would fulfill your every desire. Have I kept my promise so far?”

  An indecipherable murmur of voices answered. But if the Devil was bothered by the less-than-unanimous response, he didn’t show it. Instead, his smile grew even wider.

  “Yes, yes, I know. You’re anxious to get to the bidding. I promise it will start momentarily. But before we begin, I wanted each and every one of you to know how much I value your business. I promised that this would be an event like no other, and I keep my promises. To set the tone for tonight, I want to begin the festivities with a gift. One lucky attendee will take home a present from me, free of charge. Bring her out.”

  The last sentence was delivered to someone offstage, and the crowd roared in response. My stomach churned from equal parts rage and disgust. My earlier speech to Virginia had been for my benefit as much as for hers. I couldn’t save every oppressed and downtrodden person in this world. We would focus on Ferah and help any other girl we could, but there was a limit to what our team could accomplish.

  Even so, what the Devil was about to do was particularly grotesque. He was giving away a woman as a door prize. While I couldn’t save everyone, neither could I just stand and watch his twisted scheme unfold. Until I secured a weapon from Zain’s man in the kitchen, I was as impotent as the would-be door prize. But I could at least mark the man who won the helpless woman and follow up with him later.

  It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing.

  And then two men dragged the door prize onstage, and everything changed. A murmur swept through the crowd as if suddenly tonight’s patrons weren’t quite so upset that the bidding hadn’t started on time. In truth, I couldn’t blame them.

  My wife was an exceptionally beautiful woman.

  FIFTY-ONE

  I do not despair easily. As a company commander in the Ranger Regiment, and then as a DIA case officer, I’d experienced more bleak situations than most people navigate in a lifetime. I’d seen human depravity on a scale that could scarcely be imagined.

  I’d helped medics place tiny form after tiny form into makeshift body bags after a suicide bomber had detonated his vest outside a school for girls in Kabul. I’d cradled a boy in my arms as his life bled away in a flood of crimson. I’d even been sitting next to Frodo when an EFP had transformed him from a world-class commando into a cripple.

  I’d thought that I’d long since passed the point where the evil of this world surprised me.

  I was wrong.

  Seeing Laila onstage, her face streaked with tears, her luxurious black hair tangled, and her green eyes shimmering with terror, broke something deep within me. Here again, the Devil was one step ahead of me. Here again, he’d checkmated me before I’d moved my first piece.

  This went beyond the squad of assassins who’d targeted me and killed an innocent cop in the process. Beyond even a monster who trafficked in the flesh of kidnapped girls. This was Laila—the woman who gave my life meaning. My wife was about to be raffled off as a door prize to a roomful of evil, lecherous men.

  No.

  The word seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. From the very fiber of my being. From the essence of my soul.

  No.

  This was not going to happen.

  Not today.

  And that was when the muscles in my forearm began to twitch. At first, I chalked the sensation up to another attack of the shakes. A flare-up triggered by the stress of seeing my wife in the hands of a monster.

  If only.

  My affliction, while sometimes debilitating, was something I’d begun to learn how to manage. In fact, I’d already stretched my fingers into the opening chord of “Tequila Sunrise” when I realized that this sensation didn’t feel anything like a typical episode. Rather than the dull numbness that usually accompanies the tremors, my forearm was on fire. Thousands of tiny unseen wasps were stinging the shit out of me.

  Virginia.

  Seeing Laila onstage had shaken me to the bone. I’d forgotten about everything and everyone else. Even the chemist from East Tennessee who’d gone into the lion’s den to rescue a fifteen-year-old girl she’d never met. Once she found Ferah, Virginia would signal her success via the tiny transmitter hooked to the sensors on my right arm.

  But the pins-and-needles sensation wasn’t crawling down my right arm.

  It was on my left.

  Duress.

  Virginia was in trouble, and she needed my help.

  Help that I couldn’t give.

  FIFTY-TWO

  What’s wrong, mate?” Oliver said. “Cat got your tongue?”

  I turned toward the mercenary only to find myse
lf staring down a dark hole of indeterminate size. Though if I’d had to guess, I’d say it was about 9mm in diameter. Mainly because the hole was formed by a Glock 19’s barrel.

  “The thing I never understood about mercenaries,” I said, looking from the pistol to Oliver, “is, why make all that money if you’re not alive to spend it?”

  “Fair enough,” Oliver said. “But I’ll do you one better. The thing I never understood about Yanks is why you still believe all that bollocks about liberty and justice for all.”

  “Well, maybe we should go have a pint,” I said, taking a step closer to the mercenary, “and talk through our differences like men.”

  “Love to, mate,” Oliver said. “But not today. Now, stay where you are, or I’ll be forced to kneecap you.”

  So apparently Oliver had instructions to take me alive. That was an interesting development.

  “Come on, friend,” I said, edging closer still. “It doesn’t have to be this way. I don’t know you, but I promise you this: I make a better friend than enemy.”

  “If only it were up to me,” Oliver said, his dead eyes looking through me. “But you don’t know the extent of the Devil’s reach.”

  True enough. But I did know the extent of mine. I shot both hands out, sweeping the pistol barrel off-line with my right, while clamping the back of the pistol with my left. I felt the rear sight bite into my palm, and then I was twisting right, torquing my hips. Oliver’s wrist broke with an audible pop.

  Then the pistol was mine.

  “I told you not to let him get close to you,” said a voice to my right. A voice with an Irish accent.

  I pivoted toward the sound, my pistol coming online only to freeze. I was nose to nose with the business end of a short-barreled tactical shotgun. Facing down Oliver’s Glock had been a bit nerve-racking, but it didn’t hold a candle to the shotgun’s dark, imposing maw.

  This was not a fight I was going to win.

  As if to drive home this point, the unmistakable sound of another shotgun’s slide racking came from my left, a split second before an oval of cold steel pressed against the back of my head.

  “That was very impressive,” the Irishman said. “Truly it was. But trust me when I tell you this is over. Now. Place the pistol on the floor and walk toward the stage. Your wife is waiting.”

  FIFTY-THREE

  A thousand scenarios flashed through my mind, each one more desperate than the last. The Devil held my wife’s life in his hands, and I was pinned between two guys with sawed-off shotguns. My odds weren’t great, but I had a feeling they wouldn’t get any better once I got onstage. I had two choices—fight or die.

  I chose to fight.

  Or at least I would have if the Irishman hadn’t fired his shotgun into my gut.

  To say the pain was intense is a bit like saying that a nuclear blast is hot. The words might be true, but that doesn’t mean the description is accurate. One second I was on my feet, trying to figure out how to kill these fuckers without getting myself or Laila whacked in the process. The next I was lying on the floor as my brain tried to figure out what had just happened.

  In case you’ve never experienced it, the business end of a sawed-off shotgun is loud. Eardrum-rupturing loud. So loud that I wasn’t certain I would ever hear again. On any normal day, this might have been a cause for concern. But today, hearing was pretty far down on my hierarchy of needs. Instead, the sum of my attention was directed at the waves of pain radiating from my abdomen.

  I opened my mouth, gasping for air, but my lungs didn’t seem to be following instructions.

  Everything from my breastbone to my belt buckle was on fire. Even my internal organs hurt, which until that moment I hadn’t known was even possible. The world grayed around the edges, as my vision tunneled toward blackness. I wish I could say that I gained some incredible insight about the meaning of life in those last few seconds, but I didn’t. All I could think about was how damn much it hurt to die.

  And then my lungs stopped spasming.

  I drew a breath.

  And another.

  Which was strange because, while I am not a gun geek, I do know that a blast of buckshot at this range should have shredded my lungs. Come to think of it, my entire chest cavity should have been a gaping hole. But although it felt like someone had hit me with a sledgehammer, my chest and abdomen still felt strangely connected.

  Reaching toward the radiating pain’s ground zero, my tentative fingers didn’t find bits of tissue or bone shards. Instead, they touched canvas. Or, more accurately, the canvas cover of a flexible baton round, otherwise known as a beanbag round.

  Well, son of a bitch. I was going to live.

  “Smarts a bit, doesn’t it?” the Irishman said, staring down at me with a smile. “I’m sorry about that. Truly I am. But I saw your eyes and knew the wheels were turning. And fer that, I’m proud of ya. Even so, I couldn’t let things get out of hand, now, could I? Now, up ya go.”

  He pulled me to my feet, and pain shot the length of my body. If he hadn’t been supporting me, I would have dropped to my knees. As it was, I vomited onto his shoes. An antipersonnel beanbag might have been a hell of a lot better than a load of double-aught buckshot, but my nervous system seemed to think that this was a distinction without a difference.

  “Also, turnabout is fair play, wouldn’t ya say? Me poor mate Oliver is going to have to learn to wank off left-handed until his wrist heals, isn’t he?”

  The Irishman’s mention of Oliver made me remember the Glock. I dropped my head as I let out a groan, using the opportunity to search the floor for the weapon.

  “Eyes up, laddie.”

  The Irishman poked me in the back with his shotgun. “You’re a scrappy little bugger, aren’t ya? Now, enough of this nonsense, or I’ll have to ask me friend to hit ya with another beanbagger. This time in the testicles.”

  I turned to give the Irishman’s friend a once-over, and did a double take. It was the same prick who’d been beating the shit out of Nazya in the strip club. The one who got away. And now that I saw him up close, I realized that I’d actually made his acquaintance even before the strip club—on the streets of Austin.

  Well, son of a bitch.

  Under normal circumstances this might have even been funny. I was standing in Saddam’s palace after being gutshot by a beanbag with an Irishman, a former Royal Marine, and an Iraqi commando-turned-assassin. But these weren’t normal times, which for me was saying something.

  While I was sure this would make a great story after a couple of beers, the shotgun’s detonation had attracted the attention of every swinging dick in the palace. The crowd of would-be buyers, who had been body to body before, had now opened, clearing a path to the stage like Moses parting the Red Sea. Except instead of safety, something else waited on the far shore—the Devil and my wife. And they were both looking right at me.

  “Matt,” Laila said in a half sob, half hiccup. “Maaaattt.”

  That single word tore my heart in two. Anger, terror, and despair all welled up within me as the woman I loved called out my name. But it wasn’t those dark things that ripped me apart. Anger, terror, and despair were old friends. No, it was the tiny ember burning from her impossibly green eyes that really crushed me. The way that she held herself erect even as tears streamed down her face.

  It wasn’t Laila’s pain that nearly broke me. It was her hope. Hope rooted in just one thing—me. A hope that somehow everything would be all right just because I was here. But things weren’t going to be all right.

  Not even close.

  FIFTY-FOUR

  It’s okay, baby,” I said, locking eyes with Laila as if she and I were the only people in the crowded anteroom just off the main stage. As if we weren’t surrounded by the Devil, his bodyguards, Oliver, and the sadistic Irishman. As if we were at our anniversary dinner back at Taj’s Place instead of livi
ng the darkest moment of our lives.

  “Everything’s just fine,” I said.

  But everything wasn’t fine. Not by a long shot.

  Laila looked at me, her eyes glistening. She managed a single brave nod, but didn’t speak. Maybe because she didn’t trust her voice not to break. Or maybe because she was hoping this was just a nightmare and that she’d somehow wake up.

  Either way, I was close enough to smell the warm, intoxicating scent of her skin. But it might as well have been miles rather than feet that separated us. The Devil’s thick, hairy fingers were wrapped around Laila’s slender biceps, and a shotgun was pressed againt my kidney.

  Fine wasn’t even in the same zip code.

  * * *

  —

  I apologize for the spectacle out there, Matthew,” the Devil said as we walked down a dimly lit corridor, “but I needed to get the unpleasantness out of the way as quickly as possible. I’m sure you understand.”

  I was beginning to learn that the Devil had a gift for understatement. After his men had me fully in hand, the Devil had turned over the flesh auction to one of his acolytes and walked offstage. The jackass from the strip club pulled Laila along while a second bodyguard shadowed the Devil. The crowd surrounding me followed suit. Rough hands dragged me across the palace floor when I stumbled, which was often. The fresh bruises still forming on my abdomen made walking a bit of a chore.

  There was also the matter of Oliver, who seemed less than thrilled with his newly broken wrist. Once we were off the stage and out of sight of the crowd, he expressed his displeasure through a sucker punch that caught me on the jaw. This was followed by a roundhouse to my temple that dropped me like a stone. The former Royal Marine then proceeded to stomp and kick me as I curled into the fetal position, trying to absorb his blows with my back and legs as opposed to my internal organs.